Quarterback Damon Allen celebrates with the spoils of victory after the Toronto Argonauts’ 27-19 win over the B.C. Lions in the 2004 CFL championship game in Ottawa.Wayne Cuddington
/ Postmedia News files

Edmonton Eskimos quarterback Warren Moon gets a shower of bubbly from teammate Ted Milian in the dressing room in 1980 after the Eskimos won their third straight championship, this time over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in a 48-10 blowout.PNG files
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Windsor's Jerry Kauric kicked the winning field goal for the Eskimos in the 1987 Grey Cup.Greg Kinch, Reuters
/ The Windsor Star

Ottawa Rough Riders quarterback Russ Jackson hoists the Grey Cup after playing his final CFL game in the 1969 championship game in Montreal. The Eastern Riders beat the Western Riders from Saskatchewan 29-11.Postmedia News files
/ .

Edmonton Eskimos star Jackie Parker savours the Esks’ first Grey Cup championship after his final-minute heroics against the Montreal Alouettes at the 1954 championship game in Toronto. The Esks won 26-25, their first of three straight championships.Postmedia files
/ .

Former CFL commissioner Jake Gaudaur is shown in a football pose in a handout photo. Football was an important distraction for Canadians during the dark days of the Second World War. When the Toronto Royal Canadian Air Force Hurricanes won the 1942 Grey Cup, it boosted the morale of a country deeply affected by war.HO-Infieldfly Productions
/ The Canadian Press

Game action from the 1950 Grey Cup game (aka the Mud Bowl), between the Toronto Argonauts and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Photo courtesy of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum.

Pete Thodos runs for the game-winning touchdown in the 1948 Grey Cup game between Calgary and Toronto. The game is widely considered to be the true kickoff of the national game, as fans flooded east, taking their western tradition with them, to cheer their beloved football team to victory.Courtesy
/ Daryl Slade

This generation might say no one was more important to the Canadian Football League than David Braley.

Could you truly carve out an accurate representation of the Grey Cup's essential durability without including two overserved fans in rival team uniforms leaning on each other, perhaps one in Rider Green and the other in Toronto double blue with his mouth open — his mournful "Arrrrrrgooooos!" hanging in the air above the mountain, unspoken but clearly implied?

Would the monument have to be ankle-deep in mud, encased in ice, or enshrouded in fog for the sake of historical accuracy?

Some of the greatest witnesses to the last 50 of those 100 years, the keepers of the folklore, are now, sadly, "out of our reach," to use the delicate phrase of Hugh Campbell. Just in the last few years, Campbell, now 71 and retired in San Diego, has lost Joe Faragalli and Murphy from that Edmonton coaching staff, as well as his former quarterback and dear friend Lancaster, and his longtime sounding board, Parker. Another from that dynasty staff, Matthews, won't be able to make it to Toronto for the 100th anniversary because he's battling cancer in Oregon.

But in conversation last week with three CFL lifers — Buono, Bob O'Billovich and Campbell — it's clear that all three believe there's still a lot of juice in the old institution, as under-loved as it might sometimes appear in its largest market.

There is nothing scientific about this cross-section, just three people who bled for the league, three people I've grown to know and like, and (another helpful asset) who are still above ground.

"It's like in life, we always need something to look forward to, to rally around," Buono, the B.C. Lions' GM, was saying in his Surrey office. "And that's what the Grey Cup has been, for a lot of people, for a long time.

"It's because people know, every year, like Christmas, like Thanksgiving, it's coming, and there's a consistency to it in their lives.

"It broke the language barrier in Quebec," said Buono, who grew up in Montreal and played for the Alouettes. "It gave pride to a province that maybe was not as endowed as Ontario or Quebec, the pride of winning this national treasure — I mean Saskatchewan or Manitoba. It'd be unbelievable to see what a Grey Cup would do if a Maritime team was involved.

"Because when we see Canada, we always speak of the large centres that drive politics, that drive business ... but when the small brother in Confederation, if you want to put it that way, succeeds and does greater things than the big brother, the pride it brings to that province is very special.

"And in the end, it's an identity, too. The Grey Cups that are celebrated are, what, the Mud Bowl, the Fog Bowl, the Staple Game. All predicated on the harshness of our winters. It's the ability to overcome the environment, which is a victory in itself."

Campbell was a senior at Washington State and O'Billovich had just graduated from Montana when each saw his first Grey Cup, the same one — 1962's Fog Bowl.

"It was on ABC's Wide World Of Sports, Jim McKay doing play-by-play," said Campbell.

"I'd just signed with Ottawa," O'Billovich said, "and I saw that game and thought: 'What the heck's going on? They're going to play the last part of the game the next day?' "

Buono was only 12 at the time, but like Campbell and O'Billovich, that glimpse would be instrumental in a lifelong love affair with this creaky old league and its iconic championship game.

What has made the Grey Cup endure?

"I used to think it was the East-West rivalry," said Campbell, who has been to 17 Grey Cups as a participant (player, coach or administrator).

"But as time's gone on, I think the people of Canada don't necessarily root regionally any more. If their team's not in, sometimes they're so mad ... it's like fans in Hamilton are not going to root for the Toronto Argos. But in the beginning, it was very much that way — or at least, being in Saskatchewan, we certainly felt that way."

"I came here from Alberta, where it's either north or south. Nobody in Edmonton celebrates when Calgary wins the Cup, and vice versa," Buono said. "But when I got here and we won in 2006, the effect it had on the whole province was tremendous.

"And that's what the Grey Cup does. Everybody's there for the same reason, to celebrate football, the Canadian institution that it is, and at the end of it, I think it has a lot to do with breaking the barriers that we create because of ignorance, or politics. People are people."

Each one of them — indeed, probably everyone who has ever come from another place to put down roots in the CFL — has had to defend the game from skeptics and those who put it down as minor-league.

"When I came up to play, they were paying American players better up here than the NFL was. That's the truth," said O'Billovich, who's been a star player with Ottawa, a Grey Cup-winning coach in Toronto and a superior player personnel man in Saskatchewan, Calgary, B.C. and Hamilton.

"The CFL had been in existence longer, and the NFL was just getting ready to take off with their product. Of course, there's no comparison now when it comes to the finances, but the game itself, I've always said the CFL game is a better spectator sport."

This is an article of faith among CFL fans, who, like Buono, see the Grey Cup as the ultimate expression of a homegrown, unique game whose major league is the only one played entirely (but for the brief U.S. experiment in the early 1990s) within Canadian borders.

It has long survived as a unifying force, and even in a fragmented, contentious, bickering world, there is something to be said for an event that makes the whole country stand still for a few hours on a cold November evening — and maybe even force a sitting prime minister to make a choice.

"When we came back to Ottawa from that '66 game that we lost to Saskatchewan," said O'Billovich, "they had a dinner to recognize the Rough Riders for being in the Grey Cup, and John Diefenbaker came and spoke at it.

"He said he was really torn, being a Saskatchewan native son, and he thought the only safe way to go was to tell people he was cheering for the Roughriders (which could have meant Rough Riders).

"But he said down deep, he knew: they hadn't won a Grey Cup in Saskatchewan for so long, it was like when they had the great drought out there. He said it was so dry the trees were lookin' for dogs. I'll never forget that. It cracked everybody up."

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